NSF cancels funding round

As Nature reports, the NSF has cancelled its target dates for this round of political science funding. As best as we currently know, the NSF is planning to go ahead with its January 2014 funding round. Presumably, this is linked to uncertainties surrounding the Coburn amendment. The Nature story quotes me as saying that this is somewhere between devastating and crippling to political science funding as a whole – what I had meant to refer to was the fallout that would happen if NSF were to cancel political science funding altogether (which is not currently on the cards). Obviously, if you care about this issue and are a political science academic, you should talk to your university president, and your local Congressman/woman/Senator’s office.

2 Responses to NSF cancels funding round

So if political scientists are unable to understand/ influence the political system sufficiently to procure a rather trivial amount of funding, should we take this as a sign that the money was rightly saved, or that Cobern was wrong to think there was any reason to withold money from us since we’re harmless?